Decoys in the radar and infrared bands are used by aircraft to protect against approaching missiles. Devices are known, for instance, for aircraft to produce chaff and IR flares. This chaff is intended to act as decoy for radar and/or increase ground clutter at the same time. However, modern pulse-doppler radar can recognize such decoys, especially in the lookdown/shutdown mode. This is particularly true because simple decoys, in contrast to true targets, do not exhibit a corresponding doppler shift in the radar band. A second problem is caused by the fact that the flares--when they function as spot MgF.sub.2 flares either exhibit an entirely inappropriate adaptation of the aircraft's IR radiation and, moreover, radiate excessively in the UV band, or--when they function as area flares on the basis of red phosphorus--they can not only be recognized as such because of the absence of independent motion, but because they do not emit their IR radiation until after they are beyond the sighting window of the IR searchhead which is locked onto the true target. In addition, flares will also be ineffective against imaging searchheads expected to be availabgle in the future because such decoys, in contrast to true targets, exhibit no contours or edges in the low-frequency range.
An aircraft able to recognize the illumination of a hostile fighter through its lookdown/shutdown aircraft radar, nevertheless cannot know whether the enemy is employing missiles with a passive IR searchhead and/or with a passive radar searchhead, which uses the target's reflection in the illumination radar as target information.
A flying decoy is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,226 as launched from an aircraft, and as having a streamlined body and a radar-reflection amplifying device as well as an engine. However that decoy has not proven to be successful against weapons with an IR searchhead or with a combined infrared and radar searchhead.